I love seafood, but I eat it quite rarely. About a third of my old Department did fisheries and aquaculture science so I’ve seen many seminars and Thesis defenses on the topic and am quite aware of the problems with the world’s fisheries stocks. I also prefer freshwater fish – I grew up on the…

PZ probably already knows about this, but I found this discovery of super-reflective skin cells in squid, cuttlefish and octopus quite amazing! Hanlon’s team discovered that the bottom layer of octopus skin, made up of cells called leucophores, is composed of a translucent, colourless, reflecting protein. “Protein reflectors are very odd in the animal kingdom,”…

For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer. Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will curely appreciate the importance of this new study: Compound Eyes, Evolutionary Ties: Biologists at the…

Baby bugs team up for sex scam The moment they’re born, beetles of one species join forces for a curious drill. The larvae hatch out of their eggs and together, as a group, climb to the tip of the plant. There, they secrete a sex pheromone that attracts a male of a bee who tries…